Xenocrates
07-25-2008, 10:06 AM
Sup guys. First post.
Yesterday night, while taking a shower, a relative definition for poetry and magick came to my head. Perhaps the exact terms aren't the best, but then we could refine it.
Warning: The following text is written in a pompous, self important style - perhaps unsuited for a first post from someone who doesn't know shit about the subject yet - but that's only because I find such an style better suited to communicating abstract ideas in an accurate way.
This realization came without many words, but I'll elaborate on it now. I'm using poetry for the parallel since that's the way the idea originally emerged and I feel that with poetry the parallel is most fortunate, but could be applied to more or less the same extent (or at least some) to all arts.
Basically, I thought that magick could be understood as practical or external poetics - and that poetry is, in fact, magic that doesn't fly in the face of consensus since consensus doesn't apply to mental states, as they are accessible only to their subject - telepaths notwithstanding.
Let's say that both are composed of content (analogous to aristotelian matter), procedure (analogous to aristotelian form) and intent (Which would synthesize aristotelian final and effective causes).
Either in magick or poetry, the magician or poets first "chooses"* content according to a hidden criterion, and then filters them once again through criteria of procedure, the sum total and interaction of which compose the style, in order to influence a system, with the purpose of eliciting desired changes, circumventing the usual progression of states (consensual causality) in the system - using a shortcut, so to speak.
Hidden criterion: The content of poetics, the words (or more commonly, thoughts) that "pop to mind", product of "inspiration" are perceived as coming from ourselves - yet from a process that's not under our control or subject to our examination. That's why I call it a hidden criterion: it's a criterion in the sense that of all the possible outcomes of human action, a particular one emerges; and hidden as it is not accessible. They product of the hidden criterion also has usually a perceived quality of being necessary, but since I doubt this is essential to it I will not go further into that. This appears as a somewhat paradoxical event in which we are certain a given line of thought and action is chosen freely by us, yet we couldn't have done it any other way nor did we know the options, thus denying both freedom and choice.**
Criteria of procedure: How the products of the hidden criterion are arranged in order to fit a scheme of norms (Which needn't be stablished and might even be in itself product of a hidden criterion) that is, when as poets we tweak our words in order to create the metric of the poem, or choose the exact words with which to refer to a particular object; or when as magicians and the like we sigilize, do a ritual, smear our faces with semen or adhere to any other method - the lack of method is obviously NOT a method, but that's not relevant to this explanation since "lack of method" is also a way of proceeding.
Intent: Both the motive for carrying out the procedure and a prefiguration of the results.
With poetry we try to evoke (a word also used in magick contexts) certain states of mind (mainly emotions) without providing a consensual cause for them, we try to make the reader feel sad, or to convey the feeling of being in love (most usually), frustration, etc., without killing their pet dog, or introducing them to their dream partner, or thwarting their efforts.
With magick we try to produce certain states of world without providing a consensual cause for them.
Poetry and magick can be seen as existing in a continuum or gradation in which both blend into each other and into other aspects of human life. Poetry and magick tend to borrow aspects from each other - poetic places, actions and thoughts are usually magickally significant or conducive to the magick practice and magick content and procedures are often of a markedly poetic nature. Events with an unknown or beyond our intellect causal history often both arouse or poetic sensibility and are classified as magick.
Some of the best moments in life are those in which poetics and magick overlap, when something both beautiful and difficult to understand happens and our sense of wonder is overloaded, leaving a searing afterimage in our lines of thought and action: a clear, although residual perception that keeps exerting an influence in ourselves until our sense of wonder "renormalizes" or becomes accustomed to the new perception. This afterimage analogue often as a catalyst for further personal development, realizations and poetic and magical lines of thought and action.
Less self-referential and aware accounts of poetry and magic can be found everywhere, all the time around us: From the way we decorate our houses to appeal to our tastes, through birthday presents, to blowing air into old console cartridge's pins *** - even when they are clean ;)
* Choose is a poor verb choice taking into account this explanation, but what the hell!
** Doesn't that sound a lot like instinct?
*** Probably the best account of everyday magic I can think of: You blow air into a bitchy cartridge and voilą, it works. Confirmed and practiced by everyone who's owned a cartridge console.
Yesterday night, while taking a shower, a relative definition for poetry and magick came to my head. Perhaps the exact terms aren't the best, but then we could refine it.
Warning: The following text is written in a pompous, self important style - perhaps unsuited for a first post from someone who doesn't know shit about the subject yet - but that's only because I find such an style better suited to communicating abstract ideas in an accurate way.
This realization came without many words, but I'll elaborate on it now. I'm using poetry for the parallel since that's the way the idea originally emerged and I feel that with poetry the parallel is most fortunate, but could be applied to more or less the same extent (or at least some) to all arts.
Basically, I thought that magick could be understood as practical or external poetics - and that poetry is, in fact, magic that doesn't fly in the face of consensus since consensus doesn't apply to mental states, as they are accessible only to their subject - telepaths notwithstanding.
Let's say that both are composed of content (analogous to aristotelian matter), procedure (analogous to aristotelian form) and intent (Which would synthesize aristotelian final and effective causes).
Either in magick or poetry, the magician or poets first "chooses"* content according to a hidden criterion, and then filters them once again through criteria of procedure, the sum total and interaction of which compose the style, in order to influence a system, with the purpose of eliciting desired changes, circumventing the usual progression of states (consensual causality) in the system - using a shortcut, so to speak.
Hidden criterion: The content of poetics, the words (or more commonly, thoughts) that "pop to mind", product of "inspiration" are perceived as coming from ourselves - yet from a process that's not under our control or subject to our examination. That's why I call it a hidden criterion: it's a criterion in the sense that of all the possible outcomes of human action, a particular one emerges; and hidden as it is not accessible. They product of the hidden criterion also has usually a perceived quality of being necessary, but since I doubt this is essential to it I will not go further into that. This appears as a somewhat paradoxical event in which we are certain a given line of thought and action is chosen freely by us, yet we couldn't have done it any other way nor did we know the options, thus denying both freedom and choice.**
Criteria of procedure: How the products of the hidden criterion are arranged in order to fit a scheme of norms (Which needn't be stablished and might even be in itself product of a hidden criterion) that is, when as poets we tweak our words in order to create the metric of the poem, or choose the exact words with which to refer to a particular object; or when as magicians and the like we sigilize, do a ritual, smear our faces with semen or adhere to any other method - the lack of method is obviously NOT a method, but that's not relevant to this explanation since "lack of method" is also a way of proceeding.
Intent: Both the motive for carrying out the procedure and a prefiguration of the results.
With poetry we try to evoke (a word also used in magick contexts) certain states of mind (mainly emotions) without providing a consensual cause for them, we try to make the reader feel sad, or to convey the feeling of being in love (most usually), frustration, etc., without killing their pet dog, or introducing them to their dream partner, or thwarting their efforts.
With magick we try to produce certain states of world without providing a consensual cause for them.
Poetry and magick can be seen as existing in a continuum or gradation in which both blend into each other and into other aspects of human life. Poetry and magick tend to borrow aspects from each other - poetic places, actions and thoughts are usually magickally significant or conducive to the magick practice and magick content and procedures are often of a markedly poetic nature. Events with an unknown or beyond our intellect causal history often both arouse or poetic sensibility and are classified as magick.
Some of the best moments in life are those in which poetics and magick overlap, when something both beautiful and difficult to understand happens and our sense of wonder is overloaded, leaving a searing afterimage in our lines of thought and action: a clear, although residual perception that keeps exerting an influence in ourselves until our sense of wonder "renormalizes" or becomes accustomed to the new perception. This afterimage analogue often as a catalyst for further personal development, realizations and poetic and magical lines of thought and action.
Less self-referential and aware accounts of poetry and magic can be found everywhere, all the time around us: From the way we decorate our houses to appeal to our tastes, through birthday presents, to blowing air into old console cartridge's pins *** - even when they are clean ;)
* Choose is a poor verb choice taking into account this explanation, but what the hell!
** Doesn't that sound a lot like instinct?
*** Probably the best account of everyday magic I can think of: You blow air into a bitchy cartridge and voilą, it works. Confirmed and practiced by everyone who's owned a cartridge console.